'Best' Techno / electronic music scene in Europe?

General Chat // Music Discussion
skol
tense
Posts: 10
Joined: Thu Nov 06, 2014 2:25 pm
'Best' Techno / electronic music scene in Europe?

Post by skol »

Hey everyone,

the thread about Detroit as the potentially new Berlin made me think about the current situation in Europe.
Which city do you consider to have the 'best' electronic music scene in Europe?

Personally three cities come to my mind:
- Berlin
- London
- the Amsterdam / Rotterdam hub

About London and Berlin I can only refer to experiences from friends but I've been around Rotterdam and Amsterdam for a year now and there is a lot of good stuff going on here. I also recognise Vienna as a city that is getting a lot of attention for its music lately.

I'm really curious to hear some opinions here. If you could give some reasons to justify your choice or name some clubs / event organisations, it could help others to take a look into it. Personally I will have to move again quite soon (due to studies) and I think about moving to Barcelona. After some research last night I am a little bit disappointed about the city's electronic nightlife based on what I could find online. Maybe there will also be someone who has explicit experience with this place.

In this sense I really want to put in a word for Rotterdam. Always being a little bit in the shadow of Amsterdam, this place has grown tremendously in the last years. Clubs like Perron, Toffler or event organisations auch as 'Give Soul' really bring great line-ups into the city. We had Jeff Mills here in September. Ben Sims. Surgeon. Seth Troxler. Dixon b2b Ame 9 hours set. Marcel Dettmann, Rodhad, DVS1, Maceo Plex and some others this month. And another great 'Rotterdamse Rave' in February: check out this link
Quote:
https://www.facebook.com/events/373706356118317/
.

I am less familiar with Amsterdam but Trouw, which is unfortunately closing in January, Melkweg and Studio 80 are hosting great nights constantly.

Keen to hear some experiences / recommendations.
Best, skol

User avatar
Lost to the Void
subsekt
subsekt
Posts: 13518
Joined: Sat Feb 18, 2012 1:31 pm
Re: 'Best' Techno / electronic music scene in Europe?

Post by Lost to the Void »

Yeah london should not be on that list.
We just have the same shit you have in any other big city, at least when it comes for techno.
For a lot of other electronic music it's great, but for techno you could literally be anywhere.
Mastering Engineer @ Black Monolith Studio
New Shit
Techno is dead. Long live Techno.

User avatar
Mono-xID
Uumfääng
Posts: 3380
Joined: Thu Aug 16, 2012 4:20 pm
Location: Berlin
Re: 'Best' Techno / electronic music scene in Europe?

Post by Mono-xID »

Berlin is still strong when it comes to electronic music in general but it's fookin saturated. Besides your obvious Jerkhains, Tresors and fancy Watergate there are still some clubs that waves the underground flag. Subland Club is great for more obscure, harder industrial-ish stuff. My mates Rory St. John, Swarm Intelligence or Monolog are regularly playing there.
Thing is you have to know where you go as the underground scene oprates in squat basements or more inconsiderable small places. Stattbad and About Blank are nice for a proper techno fix.

But yeah, the city lost it's charme long ago. It's flooded with Italians and spanish people.
http://soundcloud.com/monoxid

Behringer = ARTS label of synths

User avatar
mainst09
Traits
Posts: 1416
Joined: Wed Apr 11, 2012 6:58 pm
Location: Cambridge
Re: 'Best' Techno / electronic music scene in Europe?

Post by mainst09 »

Mono-xID wrote:But yeah, the city lost it's charme long ago. It's flooded with Italians and spanish people.


hahah so true
Voices From Cindy's Cunt

skol
tense
Posts: 10
Joined: Thu Nov 06, 2014 2:25 pm
Re: 'Best' Techno / electronic music scene in Europe?

Post by skol »

Lost to the Void wrote:Yeah london should not be on that list.
We just have the same shit you have in any other big city, at least when it comes for techno.
For a lot of other electronic music it's great, but for techno you could literally be anywhere.
But isn't Fabric quite an institution + numerous warehouse parties around the city?

Mono-xID wrote:Berlin is still strong when it comes to electronic music in general but it's fookin saturated. Besides your obvious Jerkhains, Tresors and fancy Watergate there are still some clubs that waves the underground flag. Subland Club is great for more obscure, harder industrial-ish stuff. My mates Rory St. John, Swarm Intelligence or Monolog are regularly playing there.
Thing is you have to know where you go as the underground scene oprates in squat basements or more inconsiderable small places. Stattbad and About Blank are nice for a proper techno fix.

But yeah, the city lost it's charme long ago. It's flooded with Italians and spanish people.
What's wrong with Berghain, Tresor and Watergate? I've never been there so just curious.

Another thought train that I'm following: Which will be the next big place in Europe for Techno / electronic music? The big capitals are slowly getting saturated and my gut feeling tells me that everything will move towards Eastern Europe. Dixon left quite some remarks about Belgrade lately. It has kind of this Berlin 90's touch. I was there this summer while doing a round trip through Eastern Europe. Living there is ridiculously cheap. Everything is very deregulated. It kind of asks for creative people to move there and build a scene.

Alume
Confetti
Posts: 2629
Joined: Wed Jun 19, 2013 1:50 pm
Re: 'Best' Techno / electronic music scene in Europe?

Post by Alume »

We should all gather and start a colony somewhere.

User avatar
AxeD
durchfall
Posts: 486
Joined: Thu Sep 13, 2012 12:06 am
Location: Damstarem
Re: 'Best' Techno / electronic music scene in Europe?

Post by AxeD »

Berlin and Amsterdam.
UK has great nights, but not necessarily in London.

Aside from the 5-6 good clubs in Amsterdam (cheeky plug: Radion), there's good nights in warehouses-
turned-venues and the crazy amount of festivals in the summer.

User avatar
Lost to the Void
subsekt
subsekt
Posts: 13518
Joined: Sat Feb 18, 2012 1:31 pm
Re: 'Best' Techno / electronic music scene in Europe?

Post by Lost to the Void »

skol wrote:
Lost to the Void wrote:Yeah london should not be on that list.
We just have the same shit you have in any other big city, at least when it comes for techno.
For a lot of other electronic music it's great, but for techno you could literally be anywhere.
But isn't Fabric quite an institution + numerous warehouse parties around the city?

Mono-xID wrote:Berlin is still strong when it comes to electronic music in general but it's fookin saturated. Besides your obvious Jerkhains, Tresors and fancy Watergate there are still some clubs that waves the underground flag. Subland Club is great for more obscure, harder industrial-ish stuff. My mates Rory St. John, Swarm Intelligence or Monolog are regularly playing there.
Thing is you have to know where you go as the underground scene oprates in squat basements or more inconsiderable small places. Stattbad and About Blank are nice for a proper techno fix.

But yeah, the city lost it's charme long ago. It's flooded with Italians and spanish people.
What's wrong with Berghain, Tresor and Watergate? I've never been there so just curious.

Another thought train that I'm following: Which will be the next big place in Europe for Techno / electronic music? The big capitals are slowly getting saturated and my gut feeling tells me that everything will move towards Eastern Europe. Dixon left quite some remarks about Belgrade lately. It has kind of this Berlin 90's touch. I was there this summer while doing a round trip through Eastern Europe. Living there is ridiculously cheap. Everything is very deregulated. It kind of asks for creative people to move there and build a scene.


Fabric is a hideous tourist trap that occasionally has good music, if you can stand the place.
And I don`t know about "numerous" warehouse parties in the city.
You get occasional pretend warehouse parties like Dungcode if that is your thing.....
Techno events tend to be, as I said, the same as any other capital cities big events, same names. Mostly, though not always.

All the good underground institutions have either been hipsterised and no longer play underground, or gentrification has simply closed them down.

The illegal rave scene is really blowing up here though, there seems to be a big turn away from the massive commercialisation of clubs now. A lot of my old mates are out with the rigs again, and I might even start playing at illegals again.
Audiences are getting bigger at these events, though the music is a little lacking in progress.

Apart from techno, London has a healthy scene though, the bass music and dubstep is out of this world good, there is a good representation of newer stuff like trap, it`s just a shame all the good venues are going.
Mastering Engineer @ Black Monolith Studio
New Shit
Techno is dead. Long live Techno.

disparate
I forgot.... So baked.
Posts: 424
Joined: Mon May 14, 2012 12:48 pm
Re: 'Best' Techno / electronic music scene in Europe?

Post by disparate »

Londoners like to complain but they have it pretty good really, amazing lineups on a regular basis. There is a slight lack of really good venues for such a big city and the crowds aren't always ideal but, especially from where I am (Glasgow), I get really sick of the complaining when it's a world class electronic music city. So many lineups etc that would just never work up here.

I've not travelled enough to conclusively say it's (for example) in the world's top 5 but really, it could be a lot worse. There's something good to go to pretty much every weekend whether it's some low-key weirdo house thing in Plastic People or a Corsica techno-thon or anything in between, even Fabric is an ok night out compared to the hate it gets although I wouldn't really want to spend every weekend there...

I guess I'll take the point that it's maybe standard capital city fare and you'd get similar lineups in say Amsterdam, Barcelona etc but I suppose I'm just a bit sick of people making London out to be shit for music.

User avatar
msl
║▌║█║▌│║▌║▌█
Posts: 1505
Joined: Sat Jul 28, 2012 3:47 am
Location: Berlin
Contact:
Re: 'Best' Techno / electronic music scene in Europe?

Post by msl »

disparate wrote:Londoners like to complain but they have it pretty good really, amazing lineups on a regular basis.
Same in Berlin
skol wrote:What's wrong with Berghain, Tresor and Watergate? I've never been there so just curious.
Nothing, esp if your coming from small town USA/UK/etc. You can have great nights and line ups in any of them, we're just a bit jaded here. Plus they get all the tourist traffic. Its the unadvertised parties that tend to have a more real vibe.
Mono-xID wrote:But yeah, the city lost it's charme long ago. It's flooded with crappy Italian and spanish minimal techno dj's.
Corrected that for you.


.
www.bernadettetrax.bandcamp.com
www.soundcloud.com/michaellovatt


“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.” Dune

User avatar
Mono-xID
Uumfääng
Posts: 3380
Joined: Thu Aug 16, 2012 4:20 pm
Location: Berlin
Re: 'Best' Techno / electronic music scene in Europe?

Post by Mono-xID »

skol wrote:

What's wrong with Berghain, Tresor and Watergate? I've never been there so just curious.
Well, Tresors best days are long gone. Basically it's a place now where tourists getting hammered and italian DJ's ,which moved to Berlin 6 months ago, think they can feel the the "detroit vibe" (or at least smell some sweat of Jeff Mills).
Jerkhain as the venue is cool so are the line - ups. The crowd is the shitty part here.

Watergate is a fuckin fancy Tech-House club. Again, no real berliners at these partys.
http://soundcloud.com/monoxid

Behringer = ARTS label of synths

User avatar
tsurani
non reader
Posts: 88
Joined: Sat Nov 08, 2014 8:11 am
Re: 'Best' Techno / electronic music scene in Europe?

Post by tsurani »

What about the scene outside of the club. With lots of producers and dj's living in the area, record labels, shops like Schneiders Laden or Hardwax, hardware companies like MFB and software companies like Ableton. Do other factors like these contribute to the scene in Berlin much?

User avatar
Lost to the Void
subsekt
subsekt
Posts: 13518
Joined: Sat Feb 18, 2012 1:31 pm
Re: 'Best' Techno / electronic music scene in Europe?

Post by Lost to the Void »

disparate wrote:Londoners like to complain but they have it pretty good really, amazing lineups on a regular basis. There is a slight lack of really good venues for such a big city and the crowds aren't always ideal but, especially from where I am (Glasgow), I get really sick of the complaining when it's a world class electronic music city. So many lineups etc that would just never work up here.

I've not travelled enough to conclusively say it's (for example) in the world's top 5 but really, it could be a lot worse. There's something good to go to pretty much every weekend whether it's some low-key weirdo house thing in Plastic People or a Corsica techno-thon or anything in between, even Fabric is an ok night out compared to the hate it gets although I wouldn't really want to spend every weekend there...

I guess I'll take the point that it's maybe standard capital city fare and you'd get similar lineups in say Amsterdam, Barcelona etc but I suppose I'm just a bit sick of people making London out to be shit for music.
London has little personality now. All the great venues have gone, and with them their own community,their own sounds and other uniquity.
Sure you can go out every night if you want, but if you are a fan of more than the current magazine headlines then it is not so good any more.
It's also harder for the more obscure bands to play here now, again because the venues that could have accommodated them have gone, and that leaves the larger corporate venues that the more underground bands can't afford.

Fabric is rarely an ok night out man. It's hideous. Thursday nights can be ok tough, just forget the weekend, it's for tourists.

We have everything else here so it's still cool, but so much has been lost in the last 10 years it's shocking. With prices rising and rising we are going to lose what few cool clubs we have left.
Mastering Engineer @ Black Monolith Studio
New Shit
Techno is dead. Long live Techno.

User avatar
Mono-xID
Uumfääng
Posts: 3380
Joined: Thu Aug 16, 2012 4:20 pm
Location: Berlin
Re: 'Best' Techno / electronic music scene in Europe?

Post by Mono-xID »

tsurani wrote:What about the scene outside of the club.
Dunno. Besides 2-3 persons i don't have any contact with berlin techno scene and i don't wanna be part of that V-neck club. I'm not italian/spanish anyway :lol: . I still hang out with the punkrockers and weirdos like my long time mates.
tsurani wrote:With lots of producers and dj's living in the area
They are too busy with working at Mc Donalds or Helga's Bowlingcenter to get some money which they will blow for cheap speed and bad pills/ketamine to got to Jerkhain on weekend. :?
tsurani wrote:shops like Schneiders Laden
I don' have the money nor do i wanna buy a new module every week. So what should i do there? Hang around for hours and play with synths i never could afford like all the foreign dudes we talked about earlier? It's just a shop and not a daily geek meeting synth workshop.
tsurani wrote:Hardwax
Again, i don't have the time too hang out there, digging for records and philosophy over synthstabs and rhythms. 8-)
tsurani wrote:Do other factors like these contribute to the scene in Berlin much?
so to summarize and answer your question: I don't have a fuckin' clue. You'll have to ask a spanish guy with a beard and a v-neck. :lol: :lol: :lol:
http://soundcloud.com/monoxid

Behringer = ARTS label of synths

User avatar
Barfunkel
Smalahove
Posts: 2329
Joined: Mon Oct 01, 2012 8:27 am
Re: 'Best' Techno / electronic music scene in Europe?

Post by Barfunkel »

What's wrong with tourists? Particularly tourists who go to Berlin to go to clubs. Why would, for example, a Finnish guy (say, me) spoil a club in Berlin by entering it? I fail to see the harm.

I don't mind tourists in Finnish clubs, it's actually kinda cool that they bother to find out about the (few) good clubs here in Helsinki.
"I don't shower every day, but when I do, I do it after listening to some Barfunkel" - Anonymous

http://soundcloud.com/user4904810
http://www.mixcloud.com/Barfunkel/

Cloaked
hunger marcher
Posts: 288
Joined: Thu Sep 13, 2012 1:14 pm
Re: 'Best' Techno / electronic music scene in Europe?

Post by Cloaked »

Lost to the Void wrote: London has little personality now. All the great venues have gone, and with them their own community,their own sounds and other uniquity.
i really struggle to explain to my girlfriend, who moved here 5 years ago, what clubs like the end, turnmills and the key used to be like! not just musically but like you say, as a hubs with regular clienteles and fixed owners all invested in some way in these places... not just bullshit rip off merchant promoters, understaffed bars selling cans of shit lager for £5 and a transient crowd of "OI OI LADS" in v necks...

PixelKind
who is it?
Posts: 603
Joined: Fri Feb 28, 2014 2:36 am
Location: Austria
Re: 'Best' Techno / electronic music scene in Europe?

Post by PixelKind »

I agree with Barfunkel here. There are no techno clubs or events where I live so I am always a tourist when I go to any techno event since I always have to travel to another city and I usually stay for the weekend or a few days

User avatar
Lost to the Void
subsekt
subsekt
Posts: 13518
Joined: Sat Feb 18, 2012 1:31 pm
Re: 'Best' Techno / electronic music scene in Europe?

Post by Lost to the Void »

The great thing about some of the clubs that have gone was the self policing nature of it. You didn't need fucking passport id computers on the door and crazy eastern european ex army war criminals on the door, if you were a new face then the regulars kept an eye on you, and trouble rarely happened.
There were fewer dealer wars because the club had already reached a compromise with someone, overall you didn`t feel like a punter, you felt like a clubber in a community.

It`s not enough to just pick the latest hot names and throw them in to a venue for an event, there is so much more to it than that.
Mastering Engineer @ Black Monolith Studio
New Shit
Techno is dead. Long live Techno.

User avatar
tsurani
non reader
Posts: 88
Joined: Sat Nov 08, 2014 8:11 am
Re: 'Best' Techno / electronic music scene in Europe?

Post by tsurani »

Lost to the Void wrote:The great thing about some of the clubs that have gone was the self policing nature of it. You didn't need fucking passport id computers on the door and crazy eastern european ex army war criminals on the door, if you were a new face then the regulars kept an eye on you, and trouble rarely happened.
There were fewer dealer wars because the club had already reached a compromise with someone, overall you didn`t feel like a punter, you felt like a clubber in a community.

It`s not enough to just pick the latest hot names and throw them in to a venue for an event, there is so much more to it than that.
Totally agree, and from what I have seen venues like that in the UK are rare these days

User avatar
Lost to the Void
subsekt
subsekt
Posts: 13518
Joined: Sat Feb 18, 2012 1:31 pm
Re: 'Best' Techno / electronic music scene in Europe?

Post by Lost to the Void »

tsurani wrote:
Lost to the Void wrote:The great thing about some of the clubs that have gone was the self policing nature of it. You didn't need fucking passport id computers on the door and crazy eastern european ex army war criminals on the door, if you were a new face then the regulars kept an eye on you, and trouble rarely happened.
There were fewer dealer wars because the club had already reached a compromise with someone, overall you didn`t feel like a punter, you felt like a clubber in a community.

It`s not enough to just pick the latest hot names and throw them in to a venue for an event, there is so much more to it than that.
Totally agree, and from what I have seen venues like that in the UK are rare these days
They are there, outside of london there are some nice little scenes with more community, in the uk. Out of the distractions of this corporatised city there does still seem to be a good genuine underground club culture. Though they too are beset by problems with environmental health and so on.

Just fucking leave us alone, we don`t want your bloody limiters on our soundsystems.
Mastering Engineer @ Black Monolith Studio
New Shit
Techno is dead. Long live Techno.


Post Reply